


new traditions

by DoctorFitzy (KittooningMalijah)



Series: Hauntober 2020 [31]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birthday, Birthday Cake, Comfort No Hurt, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hauntober, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27304954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittooningMalijah/pseuds/DoctorFitzy
Summary: After an unpleasant day at work, Deke comes home to a less unpleasant surprise.
Relationships: Trevor Khan/Deke Shaw
Series: Hauntober 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948561
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	new traditions

**Author's Note:**

> for Hauntober day 31: "celebrate"

It was easily the worst day he'd had since the move.

The first few weeks had been easy - he had Trevor's help when it came to the security team, and most of the hard work was just getting the offices and game room set up. Even for a month after that, things were going smoothly, and all of his focus could go into new ideas and plans for games and whether he wanted to work a full day in the office or go home and do a few things on his laptop with his cat and his fiancé nearby.  _ Everything _ had been so  _ easy,  _ until it fell apart.

Before he could have even justified a lunch break, things had been derailing his day almost nonstop. The game had glitched and shut down, refusing to reboot for hours and making any updates or test runs impossible. His new R&D team thought they could make a gravity belt without proper testing, first, and created a hole in the wall of one of the labs and he'd spent an hour trying to find someone to fix it. His new assistant had somehow  _ misplaced _ some important paperwork, and it took the entire afternoon to find it again. And, to top it all off, the snow outside meant his commute home took twice as long as normal.

All Deke wanted was to change into something comfortable, crawl into bed, and sleep for at least a full day. Whether or not his fiancé chose to join him was of no consequence. As long as he would get to  _ rest. _

Opening the door to their home, he shuffled across the welcome mat to get as much snow off of his shoes as possible before actually stepping inside the house and toeing them off. For his efforts, he got cold, wet socks, the cherry on top of his perfectly horrendous day.  _ "Trevor? _ If I take another step inside and  _ anything else _ happens, I'm just going to sit on the floor and cry and not move for a week, so if there are any surprises, tell me  _ now." _

Trevor emerged from the kitchen with a worried frown, sucking something off of his thumb before stepping closer. "Bad day?"

"The  _ worst.  _ Mark today in the calendar - December 14th, the worst day of the year, I should not leave bed for fear that the entire world will collapse." Shaking his head, Deke let his shoulders sag before making sure the door closed behind him, showing his exhaustion. "That's not a joke. Every year, I'm gonna spend all day in bed, so that this never happens again."

Staying quiet for a moment, Trevor took a slow breath before speaking somewhat hesitantly. "Actually, there is  _ one _ surprise. And I'm kind of hoping that you will at least get out of  _ bed _ every year...? I'm kind of on a mission to start a tradition, here."

He frowned and shook his head again, squeezing his eyes shut.  _ "No... _ no surprises, no traditions, I just want you, and Clover, and a  _ nap.  _ I am  _ cold, _ and I am  _ wet,  _ and I'm very  _ tired, _ so can the surprise wait until the morning?"

"The surprise is kind of food based, so... no. Besides, you clearly need something good to turn your bad day around. Take off your coat and meet me in the kitchen, okay?"

"Trevor, no, wait..." But he was already gone, and Deke let out a sigh before shrugging out of his jacket to hang it up on the nearby hook. He hadn't seen so much as a tail since he'd been home, which meant that Clover was too busy elsewhere to come and greet him, a concern in itself. Normally, she dropped everything to say hello, even if she went right back to whatever trouble she got into when no one was paying enough attention to her. Hesitantly, he walked further inside until he reached the entry to the kitchen only to find the room in complete darkness. "Trevor...?"

After another quiet moment of pause, he reached out to find the switch on the wall to turn the light on, and had to blink to process anything he was seeing.

The plate on the island was serving as a platter for a small cake, though he couldn't quite read what the icing on top said from where he was. Clover was being held away from the sugary treat, though a bit of frosting on her paw meant that she'd definitely gotten close enough during whatever short span of time she was left unattended. A single balloon was tied to one of the nearby stools, swaying in the gentle breeze that came from their heating system, and a box was sat on the edge of the counter near it, not wrapped but tied up with a bow.

"Happy birthday...?"

Deke blinked again, taking a deep breath and not moving from where he was. "Excuse me...?"

"Well, we don't know when it actually is because the Kree kept track of time in the most confusing way possible, and it's not fair that I get a nice dinner and dessert and a present for my birthday, but you don't get anything." With a shrug of his shoulders, Trevor grabbed a paper towel to get the frosting off of the cat's paw before setting her down on the floor to let her wander over and nuzzle Deke's leg. "So, I picked one for you. And if you have a problem with it, too bad, because none of the rest of us got to choose ours, and you don't get to, either."

_ "Oh..." _

"Come on, I'll light a candle. If we're doing this, we're doing it right. You have to make a wish." He shook his head and turned around to get a lighter out of a drawer. "And then you can open your present, and I'll put dinner in the oven, and we can eat cake until it's done. Like adults."

Deke crouched down to lift Clover up into his arms before moving forward to get a better look at everything, choosing to stay quiet. The blue icing on top wasn't quite the same as the writing on all of his old memos, but the handwriting was still  _ Trevor's,  _ and that was enough to make him smile when he saw the  _ Happy Birthday _ staring back up at him. Birthdays and celebrating were things from before, when he was young enough that fun things were still possible, when his family could actually take the time for it. Since he left his old timeline, there hadn't been the time for it, and translating his old concept of time into something that lined up with the more widely accepted calendar that he had to adapt to was too hard to bother with.

"And... we  _ have _ to do this every year? We can't do it just this once and call it good?"

The look he got in response was more than enough to tell him that they definitely  _ couldn't  _ do that, and no amount of complaining or pestering was going to get him the outcome he wanted. "You only want one birthday party? Is this because it was a bad day? Because you know that it's statistically improbable for  _ every _ December 14th to be a bad day. Maybe next year it will be  _ great,  _ and you'll actually want to go all out." Trevor put the candle in the middle of the cake and lit it with a small shake of his head. "And there's no way that I or your grandparents would ever let you have  _ one _ birthday party. You deserve, like...  _ a million _ birthday parties.  _ Everyone _ has a special day where they get to celebrate themselves, and you deserve that, too, even if it sometimes feels like there's nothing to celebrate."

Deke had to blink again, trying to clear away the overwhelmed tears that were starting to form. After the day he'd had, coming home to a  _ pleasant  _ surprise might be more than he could take, though he didn't know how he'd ever say such a thing. He couldn't, not when there was a cat purring happily in his arms, and the man he loved was there to love him back, and everything was so much closer to perfect than he ever dreamed his life would get. "Okay, fine... but I'm definitely going to start spoiling you a little bit more on your birthday, because you deserve it."

"Will you just come make a wish so I can cut the cake? If we leave it out for too long, the cat  _ will _ get into it again. Today isn't about me, it's about  _ you,  _ and the fact that it would be impossible to make it to the emergency clinic in this weather if she gets through the frosting. It's a lemon cake, because it's  _ your _ birthday, but I'm pretty sure she's still not supposed to eat it."

With a smile, Deke gently adjusted Clover in his arms while he stepped forward to blow out the candle without much thought. Because, when he thought about it, he didn't have much he needed to wish for at all.

**(** _ the bed was warm with their combined body heat, the perfect contrast to the chill of the weather, and Clover's gentle weight on his stomach from her usual spot on top of the blankets was a reminder of how much pizza and cake they'd actually eaten at their small excuse for a party, something that was making it rather hard to get any rest. _

_ "How old are you, do you think?" _

_ "You picked out my birthday but you don't know how old I am?" _

_ "Deke, no one knows how old you are. Even in SHIELD files, it looks like someone rushed and all the numbers and they're just smudges." _

_ "So, am I guessing, or do I get to pick how old I am?" _

_ "Babe, do whatever you want. No one is going to know the difference." _

_ "Well, how old are you?" _

_ "We can't just be the same age. That's cheating." _

_ "That's not why I'm asking. I know you were twenty five when we met, because you took the long weekend for your birthday that year." _

_ "Yeah, okay. I think, once we add in the time we spent doing the time travel thing, I'm... twenty nine? Something like that." _

_ "And I was thirty, when we met, so that means I would be thirty four, now. Math saved the day, once again." _

_ "The day wasn't in danger." _

_ "You didn't see what happened at the office, today. I assure you, the day was in a lot of danger."  _ **)**


End file.
